The Grateful Dead's Drummers on Their 'Far-Out' New Collaboration

They'll be jamming with the Disco Biscuits

Nineteen years after the Grateful Dead played their last note, the band's influence continues to embed itself into virtually every crevice of rock 'n' roll.There's an entire generation of indie rock bands that sound nothing like the Grateful Dead — including the National, Vampire Weekend, and Animal Collective — that have all tipped their hat to the band's music. But for "livetronica" pioneers the Disco Biscuits, the connection goes a bit deeper.

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"The Grateful Dead are the patriarchs of our entire scene," Disco Biscuits' bassist Marc Brownstein says. The Dead's approach, business model, and concert format have been adopted by every jam band since. "They set the standard."

Tomorrow, the Grateful Dead's two drummers — Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart — will perform with the Disco Biscuits at the annual Gathering of the Vibes festival in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The unexpected collaboration is not going to be a casual sit-in, nor is it some schticky afterthought. Preparations have been going on behind the scenes for months.

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"They've been sending me versions of some of their songs that they might want to play, and I've been going into my barn and learning them," Kreutzmann says from his home in Hawaii. "They have a pretty far-out sound and I've always been a fan of anything far out. We'll really be able to get into some next-dimension territory with this."

For his part, Brownstein's been preparing for the show in much the same way actors prepare for starring roles in movies. He's been getting into character by immersing himself in the music of the Grateful Dead, particularly live recordings. The idea is to become so familiar with the way that band members interact with each other that he can almost predict their improvised parts. He's learned how they move, both individually and as a unit, and he's learned how to really get inside the music.

"It's been a renaissance for me with my relationship to the Grateful Dead," Brownstein says. "They've really become my favorite band. I just can't believe how incredible it is."

When asked if he ever had a chance to see the Dead before their breakup in 1995, he can recall the exact date without a second's thought: "My first show was June 28, 1988. And the deal was that it was a game-changer.

"There are a lot of imitators out there, bands that sound like the Grateful Dead," Brownstein says. "But there are not a lot of bands that can do what they actually did. There are just not a lot of bands that legitimately don't know what's coming next when they're playing up on stage in front of lots of people."

"The way it is in music is that, when you're young, you usually fall in love with some genre and you emulate it," Hart explains. "You learn, you get your chops on it. And then, as you grow older and get skill and find your own voice, you eventually find your own music. That's what the Grateful Dead did and that's what the Disco Biscuits did."

Being exposed to the Disco Biscuits has reminded Hart a lot of the Dead's early days, when they leased an abandoned movie theater in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood.

"We were learners," Hart says. "We were students. Every time we played, I remember Bill and I used to look at each other afterward and go, 'Wow, I really learned something tonight!' When you get older, you've played it a million times and so forth. But that's what it was like back then. We kind of stumbled upon things that caught our ear and that caught our rhythm and we put a name to them and then we could repeat them, and they became songs — but they were anomalies. They just happened."

In the beginning, the Grateful Dead sounded so different from anything else that everything they did was a gamble. But risk is the door that leads to innovation, and if the Dead didn't believe that, then the Disco Biscuits wouldn't be here today.

"We had a gigantic chance factor," Hart says. "We failed a lot because of the 'moment music' thing that we got into. We weren't just playing songs; we were making stuff up on the fly. I knew it was special. I didn't hear anybody else doing anything like it and I knew that it was totally unique. Now, would people like it? Well, I knew they would. But there were a lot of people who didn't know that. For instance, [famed promoter] Bill Graham. He said this band has no songs and can't even whistle a tune. He asked me what I was going to do when I was 27.

"The Grateful Dead were for the well-stretched ear. If you had an ear that was ready to be stretched, then we were the band for you. And of course, if you stretch your ear, you stretch your consciousness. And that's what the band was all about. It wasn't necessarily about how we began or ended songs or anything like that. We took you out there and brought you back safely. It was more like an experience than a concert or a show. They weren't 'shows' for us and they certainly weren't 'concerts.'

"We just tried to circumnavigate space and time every night," Hart continues. "That was the game. It comes down to the will — the will to want to go out there and to explore music in the moment, in the now. If you look at the Grateful Dead's music, it's more like 'now music' in some respects. We didn't think of the past, we didn't think of the future. Our battle cry, I would say, would be the now."